In momentous news, I ran my first letterpress workshop for more than 5 years on Wednesday 7th May. Hurrah! I have so missed infecting people with the letterpress bug. As you may be aware if you've been around here for a while, Mr Flat is immunocompromised and we're still pretty much shielding to keep him safe. I had to stop all events in 2020. However, we've now got a bit of tech that measures air quality, and I've realised that with both studio doors open for ventilation, and me in a good mask, I can run letterpress workshops again, albeit only in the warmer months.
Anyway, getting back to the point of this post, I welcomed Nicola and Martin to the studio for a private letterpress workshop to celebrate a special birthday, and I couldn't have hoped for a nicer couple to work with.
Martin had an idea for possible book endpapers that ended up morphing into a poster, and Nicola wanted to set a short poem by Yeats.
Martin worked on my Stephenson Blake proof press with my collection of wood type, composing a design that he inked up by hand. He did a fair bit of experimenting with different layouts, colours and inking techniques.
Nicola learnt how to hand set metal type in a composing stick, combine it with ornaments (some lovely little stars she picked out) and prepare it for printing on the Vandercook cylinder press.
They were both pleased with the results, and hope to come back next year with their daughter, who had an impromptu tour of the studio via the magic of FaceTime.
I loved Nicola's poem. We ran out of time to tidy up at the end of the day, and I still had the poem sitting on the press afterwards (in fact, as I write this it is still there, awaiting distribution back into the typecase from whence it came). Nicola very kindly gave me permission to print some extra copies for the shop, so you'll find those online soon. Thank you, Nicola!
With hindsight, I'd forgotten what was realistically possible on a group workshop and felt I was stretched a little thin given the two radically different techniques I was trying to teach simultaneously, and the fairly ambitious nature of each project, but we managed and had fun doing so!
I've now written up some new guidelines on my workshops page, so if you'd like to come and print with me, do have a read as it'll help manage your expectations for what you might be able to do in a day.